Check-in went well--I arrived at around 2 PM I think. The thing is all day I felt fine. I am supposed to be feeling weakness (OK a little) and be bruising and out of breath, but We parked the car went up several flights of stairs, and walked ages to check in. I guess I was a little short of breath, but still the strange thing was I would not have been to a doctor for any of the symptoms that I had, even at the time I checked in.
Weight
At check in--I weighted 187.5 pounds. I might have weighed that or less 10 years ago--but its been a long time. A couple of years ago, I was pretty heavy at around 210. This year I had gotten myself down to 199, and after my gall attacks (where I really started to watch what I eat) 192. But just 3 days earlier I weighed 191. So the leukemia weight loss was kicking in...
Settling In...
They took me up to my room on the tenth floor and got me situated. The room was nice, if a little small, but overall fine. I met a nurse, got an IV started and was officially in the hospital. Still I am very optimistic and just ready to resign myself to the treatment.
That night, I started chemo with my dinner. I am getting three kinds of chemo, and this is the first--Vesinoid. As I understand it, with the type of Leukemia I have, young cells don't mature. The Vesinoid forces them to mature, but they can carry all sorts of granules of some sort with them that can cause issues like inflammation and other things. Anyway--I start this chemo before the other chemo that kills off everything.
The next thing I discover is that I am to have a "port" inserted. A port is a device they insert in your chest that allows them to directly give you chemo and take blood as needed. To do it however you need to be healthy enough for surgery, so they will need to give me platelets and transfusions since my blood counts are absurdly low.
Mugga Test
Before that though--I am whisked off for a Mugga (sp?). They take me down to a room with radioactive warning symbols all over the place and I meet the tech. He explains that in this test, they extract some blood, tag it with radioactive isotopes, and then reinsert it into me (all to the erratic chattering of of a Geiger counter just in case you forgot what was happening).
The reason for the test is that one of the chemo-therapies I am scheduled for is "cardiotoxic"--meaning it can hurt my heart. If my heart chambers aren't filling and emptying efficiently, the chemo can sit there and cause long term damage.
I lay under x-ray cameras that synchronize the images they take with EKG readings and measure the flow of the blood through my heart. Pretty amazing.
Transfusions
By now its something like 10 at night, and I am back in my room. As I mentioned before I'm scheduled to get a port. The surgeon is actually going to be the same one I had scheduled my gallbladder surgery with. He has scheduled the surgery for 5:30 AM.
To get my blood levels to the point where I am able to have surgery, I am going to need transfusions. As I recall, it started with a bag of Platelets, and followed by two bags of blood. The platelets go fast, but because its my first time having a transfusion, they have to do it slowly-about 3 hours a bag for the blood. Time is pretty tight.
In addition, while delivering transfusions, the nurses need to check your vitals every thirty minutes--blood pressure, temp, that sort of thing. So, all of this means, that when my immune system is already down, and I am on my way to an AM surgery, in my case, I also got almost no sleep.
Enter our friend the fever, a fever of 102.7.
I felt miserable--no sleep, high fever, but thankfully after some tylenol and a lot of sweating, the fever broke.
Port Surgery?
At 5:30 my transporter comes and carts me down to surgery. They take me to the wrong one at first, which was funny, but eventually I end up in Rapid In and Out. My bed and I are put in a surgery cubby to await the next steps.
I get a new IV in my right hand to compliment the one in my left arm, and am all setup when the doctor arrives. He looks over my charts, and, like my gallbladder surgery, this surgery is cancelled. After everything I went through to get to this point it was very disappointing.
There is an alternative to a port, and its called a picc, and that is what I will have instead.
The Dr. explains that because I had fevers, and because they could not pull labs to check my blood levels (since I was still receiving transfusions) it was too risky to risk surgery.
Exhausted, deflated, and a bit glum I am wheeled back to my room.
And that, was Friday.
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